Viola Davis: Meryl Streep warned me about her speech

Viola Davis: Meryl Streep warned me about her speech

The 'How To Get Away With Murder' star - who presented her close pal with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award at the event on Sunday evening (08.01.17) - says the 'Florence Foster Jenkins' actress knew she would be creating some uproar with her comments about President-elect Donald Trump.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday evening, Viola said: "She told me she was going to p**s off some people of so I was bracing for impact. I love it! I feel like anyone who was the mouthpiece of anything progressive, whether it was Martin Luther King or John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi or whatever, p****d people off.

"She's earned the right to say that and I think all of us felt a sigh of relief. Sometimes you need the first person to dive in there and have the courage and the bravery to give a mouthpiece to what we were all feeling. We all know that we are in the midst of change but I think that we as artists are really given permission to give ideas and what people are feeling a voice. At the end of the day, we do what we do to remind people to connect, that we are all in it together."

Since the 67-year-old actress' defiant speech, celebrities have rushed to congratulate the star for her comments.

In the speech, Meryl said: "Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if you kick us all out, you'll have nothing to watch except for football and mixed martial arts, which are not arts. But who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places ...

"This instinct to humiliate, when it's modelled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."